Early in 2020, Spotify will be halting political ad sales in the US, Ad Age reported Friday Political advertising won’t be running for the 130 million listeners of its ad-supported plan or its original and exclusive podcasts.
Spotify told Ad Age in a statement that it does “not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our process, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content.”
For a while now, tech platforms have been thinking about how they will be handling political advertising on their sites, especially with the 2020 US presidential election coming up. Twitter announced a ban on promoting political content in November. “While internet advertising is incredibly powerful and very effective for commercial advertisers, that power brings significant risks to politics, where it can be used to influence votes to affect the lives of millions,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted.
Microsoft-owned LinkedIn and Bing do not allow political advertising.
New rules for political campaign and issue ads in 2018 were introduced by Facebook, which requires advertisers to be verified, although the social media platform refuses to fact check political ads.
The new policy that Spotify put into place will cover candidates, elected and appointed officials, nonprofits and political parties and Super PACs as well as advocacy content around political entities and legislative or judicial outcomes, Ad Age reported.
As of this writing, the company had not yet updated its policy page, which continues to list U.S. political ads as restricted but not banned: “Political advertising (candidates, campaigns, issues) is permitted in the U.S. subject to restrictions. We do not accept political advertising outside the U.S.”